Field of the Disclosure
The technology of the disclosure relates to conferences, such as audio conferences, video conferences, and/or text chat conferences.
Technical Background
Conference calls allow two or more people to communicate. Typically, to setup a conference call among multiple participants, a meeting organizer schedules a meeting time, and reserves a conference bridge for availability during that time. The meeting organizer distributes the conference bridge phone number for the meeting. At the appropriate time, participants dial the conference bridge phone number to join the conference.
Though conference calls allow a plurality of participants to remotely communicate, participants of such calls may encounter various impediments to productivity. For example, if a conference participant wishes the participants of the conference to start a particular application to facilitate or be used during a call, problems may be encountered. For example, some conference participants may not have the application available on their personal computer. The conference participant may not have conceived of a need to use the application for the conference until participation in the conference began. Thus, there may have been insufficient notice for an information technology (IT) department to have installed the application on personal computers of the conference participants before the conference. Furthermore, the members of the conference may work for different organizations within a company or for different companies altogether. Thus there may be no common information technology (IT) department for providing the application for all the conference participants before the conference. Different conference participants may have different versions of a same application installed on their personal computer. The different application versions may be incompatible. Some members of a conference may not have a valid software license to execute the application.
One approach is for a conference participant to share their desktop with other participants of the conference. In this manner, the conference participant may present one instance of an application to the users of a conference. The conference participant may share her desktop in two ways: read-only, or with full access. If the shared desktop is shared read-only, other participants may not collaboratively manipulate the application. If the shared desktop is shared with full access, conference participants may also view or change other portions of her desktop. All conference participants may not have the same screen sharing application software and/or version on their personal computer. Firewalls may restrict screen sharing applications running on the personal computers of the participants from communicating with one another. Further, screen sharing only provides one instance of an application. Accordingly, screen sharing also does not address instances where greater collaboration or productivity could be achieved with multiple application instances for the participants of the conference.